ARCS Instructional Design

Instructional Design is the process of developing learning experiences and course content. It’s a sort of “learning engineering,” using research, technology, and design thinking to build effective learning experiences.

What we can help with:

  • Creating/revising teaching and learning materials, such as syllabus, course outline, lectures, videos, activities, assessments, and supplement content, in collaboration with faculty, staff, or students
  • Consulting on course design projects at any stage, from goal-setting to polishing
  • Supporting instructors who want to try using new or unfamiliar educational technology

Examples of past projects include:

  • Partnered with an HSA faculty member to design and develop her courses in Canvas, providing both course design guidance and ongoing support in the online teaching environment.
  • Collaborated with a Chemistry faculty member to design and structure a GitHub repository for Chem 48, supporting clearer organization of materials and improved student access to course resources.
  • Worked with a Mathematics faculty member to review and strengthen course design in Canvas, offering recommendations on assignment clarity, module structure, project scaffolding, and developing targeted student feedback survey questions.
  • Researched and evaluated assessment integrity tools, including the Safe Exam Browser, to support an HSA faculty member seeking to limit AI use in online writing assessments.
  • The ARCS team worked with faculty from the Department of Computer Science to integrate the Gradescope with GitHub, GitHub Classroom, Docker, and Sakai in their course. See more details about this project.
  • The instructional designer worked with faculty from the Physics Department to design and conduct a survey study to investigate the effects of flipped class mode on students’ perception, motivation, and behavior.
  • The instructional designer contributed several videos to the Claremont Colleges Center for Teaching and Learning‘s course on designing online classes.
  • The instructional designer helped design and create a Sakai site for HMC Orientation 2020.
  • The instructional designer worked with faculty from the Engineering Department to create the instructional materials for labs. The materials created included a lab prompt, a lab report rubric, a peer review feedback form for lab reports, and an assessment sheet for graders.
  • The instructional designer worked with faculty from the Math Department to update the tutorial pages so that they are easier to navigate and are more accessible.
  • The instructional designer collaborated with faculty from the Department of Computer Science to integrate Gradescope with Sakai, in order to allow students to access the grades of their programming assignments more easily.
  • The instructional designer helped faculty from the Department of Chemistry design and implement a collaborative video creation project using the tool of Toonly. The instructional designer also created feedback instruments to gather data on student attitudes. 
  • The instructional designer worked with faculty from the Department of Computer Science in redesigning some course components, such as course syllabus, course feedback surveys, and the instructions for GitHub projects of CS121. The course redesign project was published as “Redesigning a Software Development Course as a Preparation for a Capstone: An Experience Report” in the proceeding of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education.
  • In a project with the Engineering Department to redesign HMC Eng59, the Instructional Designer worked with faculty to review and provide feedback both on their new flipped classroom-style videos, as well as their new lab practicums.
  • The Instructional Designer worked with the HMC Office of Health and Wellness to develop an online course on assertiveness training in Sakai.
  • In a project with the Mathematics Department to redesign HMC Math35 to use R, an open source statistical package, instead of the commercial software called Minitab, the Instructional Designer reviewed all of the lecture slides and gave feedback on their organization and content based on the faculty members’ learning objectives.
  • The Instructional Designer and Instructional Technologist collaborated with Prof. Jim Boerkoel from the Computer Science Department to design in-class workshops for CS 121.

Contact

Yi Luo, Senior Instructional Designer, yluo@hmc.edu.